Cabinet's £45m cuts list for Lancashire County Council

Fiona Finch

Lancashire County Council's cabinet meets next week to decide whether to make £45m of cuts to services.

It will be making a detailed review of service budgets on Thursday September 14.

The council says proposed savings, which would come from more than 30 services, are not expected to have a negative impact on front line service delivery, as they would come mainly from "efficiencies, recurrent underspends, income generation and service change".

It says the council's broader financial position, as detailed in an update published today, remains "extremely challenging", as a combination of inflationary pressures and rising demand means that the council still faces a funding gap of £167m in 2021/22.

Leader of Lancashire County Council Coun Geoff Driver said: "The county council's financial situation is clearly extremely challenging and one of our key priorities is to create a more financially stable council that will enable us to future-proof our improvements to critical services for the most vulnerable in our communities.

"This detailed line-by-line review of all service budgets has identified significant savings and is a very helpful first step to putting the council's finances on an even keel. Clearly we will need to make more savings in the future and we are working very hard to look at how we can do that in a way that allows us to protect front-line services.

"Every council in the country has to make decisions about how it uses its resources and we are absolutely committed to funding those services that we know people value, by reopening libraries, investing in good quality roads and local environments, and supporting bus services."